Diamond Peak is a giant hill a few miles from central Waikiki. It's exercise to get to the top. To conserve our hiking power, we rented three-wheeled electric scooters ("tripeds") from Yo Scooter to take us to trailhead. The shop's operator is a character. The way weird homeless guys are characters.
We set off on these goofy scooters (neither of which was fully charged, we learned later...) towards Diamond Head. We both wore bike helmets and moved along at about the speed high school cross country runners go when they're tired. The pictures of us on these are so dorky, they'll make Segway pollo look hip.
We ran out of juice about a mile from the trailhead and hiked the rest of the way to the park entrace. A dollar entrance fee later and we on our way up.
The hike to the top is pretty fun: tunnels, twisty stairs, steep stairs, long stairs, switch-backs. Good variety. 20-25 minutes if you're crusing along. A couple sure-footed joggers passed us on the way up.
The views from the top are beautiful. 360 degrees of put-a-smile-on-your-face scenery.
Once we got back down the trailhead, we were pretty tired, but still a mile from our scooters. So we hitch-hiked down the road with a family from Dallas who was just heading down. Stay tuned for the picture of us riding in their jeep's trunk.
We picked up our scooters, thanked our Texan benefactors, and started back to town on our limping electric lame-mobiles. Mine slowed to a crawl so I had to start scooting it along with my foot Razor-style. Angela's had a little more power left, so I ended up grabbing onto her arm and she towed me the final few blocks.
That night Oracle treated us to a Luau the best part of which was the asian fish. The second best part was the Hawaiian dancing performance done by some local elementary school kids. The cuteness was almost too much to bear. They'd obviously practiced because all 25 or so were very well in synch with each other.
Full day!
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